The Alabama Supreme Court decision ruling that identifies frozen embryos legally as “children” shows the GOP being “cruel,” says California Governor Gavin Newsom, writing that as a result, “a woman who has desperately dreamed of becoming a mom could now be prosecuted in the state of Alabama for trying to make those dreams come true.”
In the immediate aftermath of the ruling the University of Alabama at Birmingham paused in-vitro fertilization (IVF) treatments, meaning that the court stopped IVF at the largest hospital in Alabama and the 8th largest hospital system in the United States.
Newsom calls the decision and its immediate repercussions “sickening, and sadly not surprising for the GOP.”
We need to pause and reflect on just how cruel this is.
A woman who has desperately dreamed of becoming a mom could now be prosecuted in the state of Alabama for trying to make those dreams come true.
It’s sickening, and sadly not surprising for the @GOP. https://t.co/EhAu8ta5QP
— Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) February 22, 2024
The court ruling was a result of a wrongful death suit brought by couples whose frozen embryos had been accidentally destroyed by a clinic worker.
In bestowing personhood on those destroyed embryos, the Alabama Supreme Court overruled a lower court and allowed the wrongful death charge, in the process making every IVF procedure vulnerable to legal peril because unused embryos in the IVF process are sometimes discarded or destroyed.
The Alabama ruling criminalizes that routine part of the IVF process, immediately rendering the legal risks of performing IVF procedures too great to continue.
In a statement to the BBC, Elisabeth Smith, director of state policy at the Center for Reproductive Rights, explained that the ultimate effect of the personhood ruling would be a shutdown of the procedure since “not all embryos are used [In IVF], nor can they be.”